Battle of Patay

The Battle of Patay (18 June 1429) was the culminating engagement of the Loire Campaign of the Hundred Years' War between the French and English in north-central France. It
was a decisive victory for the French and decimated the corps of veteran English longbowmen. This victory was to the French what Agincourt was to the English. Although credited
to Joan of Arc, most of the fighting was done by the vanguard of the French army as
English units fled, and the main portions of the French army (including Joan herself) were unable to catch up to the vanguard as it continued to pursue the English for several miles.

Background

After the English abandoned the Siege of Orléans on 8 May 1429, the survivors of the besieging forces withdrew to nearby garrisons along the Loire. A month later, having gathered men and supplies for the forthcoming campaign, the French army,
under the nominal command of the Duke of Alençon, set out to capture these positions and the bridges they controlled. On 12 June they
took Jargeau by
storm, then captured the bridge at Meung-sur-Loireand marched on, without attacking the nearby castle, to lay siege to Beaugency on
15 June.

An English reinforcement army under Sir John Fastolf, which had set off from Paris following the defeat at Orléans, now joined forces with survivors of the besieging army under Lord
Talbot and Lord Scales at Meung-sur-Loire. Talbot urged an immediate attack to relieve Beaugency, but was opposed by the
more cautious Fastolf, who was reluctant to seek a pitched battle against the more numerous French. The garrison of Beaugency, unaware of the arrival of Fastolf's reinforcements and discouraged
by the reinforcement of the French by a Breton contingent under Arthur de Richemont, surrendered on 18 June. Talbot then agreed to Fastolf's proposal to retreat towards Paris.
Learning of this movement, the French set off in pursuit, and intercepted the English army near the village of Patay.

The battle

In this battle, the English employed the same methods used in the victories at Crécy in 1346 and Agincourt in 1415, deploying an army composed predominantly of longbowmen behind a barrier of
sharpened stakes driven into the ground to obstruct any attack by cavalry. On this occasion, however, the result was unusual.

Becoming aware of the French approach, Talbot sent a force of archers to ambush them in a patch of woods along the road. This ambush was discovered by scouts when a stag ran into the concealed
longbowmen and they let out an excited shout. Talbot attempted to redeploy his men to a different position, setting up 500 longbowmen in a location which would block the main road. They were
attacked by the French vanguard of about 1,500 men under La Hire and Jean Poton de Xaintrailles and swiftly overwhelmed, leading to the exposure of the other English units which were
spread out along the road. Fastolf's unit attempted to join up with the English vanguard but the latter fled, forcing Fastolf to follow suit. The rest of the battle was a prolonged mopping-up
operation against the fleeing English units, with little organized resistance.[1]

In the rout and pursuit the English lost about 2,200 casualties out of a force of 5,000, contrasted with the loss of only about a hundred Frenchmen. Fastolf, the only one of the English
commanders who had remained on horseback, managed to escape. Talbot, Scales and Sir Thomas Rempston were captured. Talbot later accused Fastolf of deserting his comrades in the face of the
enemy, a charge which he pursued vigorously once he had negotiated his release from captivity. Fastolf hotly denied the charge and was eventually cleared of the charge by a special chapter of the
Order of the Garter.

Consequences

The virtual destruction of the English field army and the loss of many of their principal veteran commanders (another, the Earl of Suffolk, had been captured in the fall of Jargeau, while the Earl of Salisburyhad been killed at the siege of Orleans in December
1428), had devastating consequences for the English position in France, from which it would never recover. During the following weeks the French, facing negligible resistance, were able to
swiftly regain swathes of territory to the south, east and north of Paris, and to crown Charles VII King of France in Reims on 17 July.